Barsabas Justus

By Eric Healy

Tom Judd's past is clouded in awkward memories, unfulfilled dreams, and hate. For him, becoming a man is all about remembering the boy he was and learning why he wasn't the boy he should have been. As a teacher, his students are daily reminders of why he failed and why he, belatedly, has to learn to do it right. But it is the publication of a book capitalizing on a former teacher's scandalous past and mysterious disappearance that catalyzes Tom to "make it right." This young man's odyssey is not just painful, it is ugly, and raw, but his story is also humorous and sensitive, and, ultimately, strengthened with hope. Hope for all of us who have ever had to tell a lie, endure a parent, or grow up.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 25, 2001
• ISBN: 9781469761107

Eric Healy

Eric Healy lives in Portland, Oregon where he writes, usually after midnight, and tries to be Dad, husband, home repair guy, and other things. Some are more important and distracting than others, but of the necessary things he can actually take credit for, writing remains the hardest and most painful.

Book preview

Contents

EPIGRAPH

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For Petta, who is not Barsabas and without whom, well…

EPIGRAPH

…Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, show whether of these two thou hast chosen…

Acts I:24

CHAPTER 1

What I hate most is being a coward. Before, if someone had asked me why, and I had been honest, I would have said the same thing as now but meant it differently. It wasn’t the dreams that kept me from reading the book right away. I had those anyway. It was another kind of anxiety. But it was still just fear.

I must have spent an hour examining the dust cover, the publishing history, the excerpted reviews from magazines, even the cryptic numbers and words below the printing date. I spent a lot of time on the dedication even though it was simple and didn’t mean much to me: To Jean. Heath’s wife is named Priscilla. I don’t know her middle name. I guess she could still be Jean, but I never heard anyone call her that. I do know that some of Heath’s students used to call her Drusilla, and one year when Disney re-released 101 Dalmatians she was known as Cruella, but that was just adolescent insensitivity. Anyway, Heath never really mentions his wife, and I only see her occasionally when she picks him up after school. Once, during a peer observation when I had to evaluate one of his boring, self-conscious lectures, she burst into the room and shouted some strange message about a meeting or gathering she had and wouldn’t be able to pick him up and could he walk or get a ride. Heath just stopped talking without looking away from his class, waited for the noise to end, and then resumed his monologue when she left. She is a homely woman, surprisingly loud and brash after Heath’s meekness. Not someone to dedicate a novel to.

I didn’t notice any of this as a student, but that’s probably because I was lazy. And I didn’t have Heath as a teacher, but my brother Paul did. Paul is a year younger, and throughout high school surpassed everything I did. My junior year I ran for student body president for the following year and lost, so I started skipping classes. I didn’t flunk anything important, just Wood Shop and a stupid class called Life Skills, a kind of Home Ec., Sex Ed. disaster. So my summer vacation between eleventh and twelfth grades was spent at school sanding wood. Worse, when regular school started in the fall, I was short on credits and Life Skills was only offered during my honors English class, so I had to make another choice.

I started my senior year with no first period class at all, and I thought it was a pretty sweet deal because the way I figured it I could spend that first hour off campus in a music store, or even doing some homework in the library, which was where I was, kind of napping over the newspaper, when my counselor, Mrs. Showat, called me into her office at the end of that first week. I was still zoning in and out between sleep and Calvin and Hobbes, so it took me a minute to catch up to what she wanted. What it amounted to was the business about the credits, and the fact that the only thing available was a first period English elective. I remember pissing and moaning about the news and trying to point out that I was already in honors English and how dropping the critical library hour cut into my plans to do a ton of homework, but Showat was unmoved. I remember moments like that because as I have gotten older I equate those decisionless exigencies with adulthood, where your earlier choices predetermine what you can realistically do, and even though you would like someone else to tell you what move to make, that someone can only point out options, so the decision just happens. It’s like all the times you’re told, are you sure you want to do that, it might come back to haunt you, and you don’t pay any attention and sure as shit it does, like a big old Casper the unfriendly ghost. Showat just reminded me that I should not have flunked Life Skills.

Today, when a new kid walks into my classroom, I try to be sensitive to how awkward that can be. Even when the kid puts on a front of great calm, or even cockiness, I know that inside he is desperately aware of how big his head is, or she is convinced that she is the fattest pig on Earth. I thought I had an advantage when I walked into Gunner’s class because I wasn’t new. He was. But I didn’t make the James Dean impression I’d planned on, even though I tried to project as much boredom as possible. And even though I knew all the students in the room, and even though I had broken up countless classrooms with timely remarks and witty observations, I still made an ass of myself. No one even noticed me. Everyone, including Gunner, was giggling at some private joke that I, the outsider who needed to take an elective English class, had missed. I stood in the doorway like I’d arrived with my own theme music, my own soundtrack, stood there while the laughs subsided until gradually the rest of the room noticed I was breathing their air. To prove that I was an alien, my head grew larger and my arms longer. My spatulate hands pried at sealed pockets with wooden digits. Within that long, metamorphosis moment all I got were blank looks, then Gunner seemed to regain some sense of decorum and said Hi. Since it was only the funniest joke in the history of the world, the class nearly raptured. Gunner laughed so hard he had to move from where he had been standing in the front of the room to his desk by the wall for support. People were pounding their desks. Charles Fenton, who was the faggiest little fucker in the school, was hooting. Lynnette Bridges, who was gorgeous, snorted snot all over her lip and no one noticed. No one saw anything except the giant dick with ears standing in the doorway, his hands and arms now grown into logs and jammed into his pants for fear they would fall to the floor and roll for the greater amusement of all.

I turned and left.

I had already read one of Heath’s earlier pieces of fiction when I was still in college and was impressed—more so, probably, by the fact that he was a writer who also happened to be one of the teachers at my old high school, than by any recognition of literary genius. At the time, I thought the earlier book wasn’t bad, maybe a vague taste of plagiarism but nothing came to mind. So what I mostly remember is dismissing it as being so formula wrought that it just seemed familiar. But this story I knew, and even though it had been giving me nightmares for a long while, I didn’t actually start reading the book until a month after Heath signed it. Even then I didn’t read it very fast, just sort of read around it, absorbing a chapter, thinking about it, laying it aside for days or a week. Since I already knew what the book was generally about, it was only the details I wanted, not the novel, not any hope for literature, so yeah, it was just a prurient interest. And it’s funny but I didn’t really pay much attention to the title. I was so wrapped up in being afraid to read the text that the meaning of the word didn’t register until I was at least halfway through, and by then I was no longer afraid.

I bought Indiscretion in the summer but I didn’t have him sign it until months later. Normally I don’t care too much for signatures, but I knew Heath, and having become a colleague, also knew he would appreciate the attention. Not that I felt sorry for him, but I have learned that nice gestures go a long way towards furthering your own interests, even if you don’t yet know what those interests are.

He looks a little like Rowan Atkinson, the British actor who does the Mr. Bean character, and who played Inspector Fowler in The Thin Blue Line, but where Atkinson parodies seriousness and intensity, Heath really is those things, with the same little neurotic twitches and blinks, and with a nose that appears to have been reamed and expanded and then pinched so that his septum looks like it’s about to prolapse. When he gets that little smirkish smile and flares those already beleaguered nostrils it looks like he’s bearing down on an especially nasty constipated bowel. A week or so into the school year I stopped by his room between first and second periods. I expected him to be flattered and to at least become flustered in his diffident way, but I had never allowed for arrogance and irritation. I smiled and sort of held up his book in a kind of salute, hoping to forestall some of his nervousness.

Have many students who’ve read it, David? When I asked him the question he blinked and looked away so I lowered the salute and just held out the book.

How should I know?

Well, I thought they would make a point of letting you know. I offered the explanation for him, but it sounded like it was for me and I half retreated with my copy.

Don’t be naive, Tom. Just because a kid says he has read something doesn’t mean he did. Heath grabbed the book and flipped it open. What do you want me to say?

I don’t know, I just thought you might see some kids with it and—

I mean in the book. What do you want me to write? He extracted a ballpoint from his shirt pocket and clicked it.

Oh. I guess anything would be all right. Just your name would be okay. Heath had already finished his signature.

You really can’t trust them you know. He closed the book and made as though to hand it back.

I beg your pardon? I reached out to take it, but he maintained his grip.

Kids. None of them is trustworthy. They’re like alcoholics. They can’t even trust themselves. We fought a small, motionless tug-of-war while he looked at me, his exposed and hairy cartilage standing me down. Finally, apparently satisfied that I had absorbed his message, he let go.

Heath is an alcoholic. He doesn’t hide the fact. He claims that he has-n’t had a drink in five years, that he still attends AA. I think he is secretly proud of his vice and perpetual recovery. I graduated from Central six years ago, which means he was probably drowning when I was still in school. It’s not that I mind drinking, but when people act odd or antisocial like Heath then it does serve as a useful vice to blame, and blame is an important tool for survival. Blaming and lying.

I blame my parents for a lot of things and used to wish they would divorce. Now it wouldn’t make any difference. But they don’t fight, ever, except for the time my father bought the gun. All of us were still living at home and he bought it because someone broke into our house once when we had gone to Disneyland for the day. It sounds better than it was. Disneyland, Sea World, or the San Diego Zoo. We went to one of those three places about twice a year, and that was it. We never went anywhere else. From Bakersfield you have to drive right by Magic Mountain to get to any of the other amusement parks, but we never stopped because the old man said he didn’t want to wait in line. So we would drive right past it, all of us staring longingly at the Colossus in the distance, and go wait in one of the lines at Disneyland. After the break-in my father brought the pistol home and it went off when he showed it to us, fired a single round as he fumbled the weapon from the shopping bag that hid it from the neighbors, as though the insult of its conveyance was too great and the mishandling of its metal body so gross that it had to announce its presence among us like a decanted little demon. And that was it. After the long silence, while we all stood fixated by the tiny new hole in the front window with its comet-like crack running to the sill, my mother cried out We’re all undone, there is evil in the house of the Lord! Then my parents left the room and fought about it in their room. Every night for about a week we would hear my mother’s crazy voice going up and down its four-note scale. She sounds like a turkey, that staccato burst of gobbles that tapers down to a few seconds of silence and then starts over. As far as I know, the gun was never fired again except for the one other time and then it was put back—uncleaned—in my father’s bureau drawer. The bottom drawer, towards the back, the box of .22 longs—minus two—stationed next to it.

Other than that one time I never knew of any fights, which, in a way, is too bad. I could have gotten a lot of mileage out of either their deaths or their divorce. Still, I learned early on that I could always describe a traumatic incident in which my brothers and sister and I were so terrified that we would sneak off into the night, Paul crying, my older brother and sister too unstable to be useful, and wander the neighborhood until things cooled down or my dad left the house. It never came close to happening no matter how much it should have or how hard I prayed. Even so, I probably did derive some benefit from those kinds of exaggerations. I think teachers were so horrified at the thought of me shepherding my siblings around in the dark that they gave me a little leeway, plus they didn’t really want to know too much. If a teacher learns too much about a kid’s shitty life he becomes obligated to pursue the matter, and, as Gunner found out, that can really be a hassle.

Looking back, maybe there was nothing really that big, nothing really that wrong. My parents weren’t responsible. And even the thing with the gun was only self-indulgent confusion. Truthfully, it’s probably because I’m so experienced at blaming that I won’t tolerate it in my students. And if you find out someone is lying, he’s already a failure.

INDISCRETION

…since the affair was only a flirtation. They had not slept together, kissed, or even brushed intimately by each other in the hall. They had only shaken hands once when they were introduced the previous year, and for the first time in five years of marriage he wished that he didn’t have a ring, but it had taken until the last day of school before he could confront her. When he did he went to her class after school and said, I need to say some things that I hope won’t offend you and that you’ll understand, because if I leave here and don’t say anything I’ll be tormented for the rest of my life. He sat in the front row of her student taught classroom while she sat behind her teacher’s desk looking more organized and professional than he ever did.

And all she said was, Okay. No confusion, no alarm. It was one of the primary reasons he was so infatuated, this way she had of cutting to the chase, not affecting other emotions.

He said, I walked past your door a half dozen times not really sure I was going to do it, and now that I’m here it’s a lot harder than I expected.

And she asked, Are you going to do it? Still no misdirection or equivocation, just the question, asked and unasked. Are you going to humiliate yourself by professing this obsession with me? Are you going to do it, kiss me savagely, sweep these ridiculous grade forms from the desk and make passionate love to me atop its unforgiving surface?

So he told her, "Well, yes, I am. The thing is, in the few months we’ve known each other we’ve gone to lunch I don’t know how many times and talked our time away in privacy. We sit together during faculty meetings. We seek each other out before and after school. I mean, obviously there’s some kind of connection, but I don’t know. What is it? Is it just friendship?

See, because that’s the point. I don’t want to be friends. What do you want? I don’t know. It’s not that easy. I didn’t expect this. I mean, I’m married. You don’t talk about her. What’s wrong with your marriage? Nothing! That’s the problem. I love my wife. I brag about her all the

time, but not to you. I don’t want to bring her up when I’m with you. What do you want? Do you want an affair? I don’t know." And he didn’t. Her directness was overpowering and

made him dizzy. Hot. I just know I’m attracted to you. I want to touch your hair, to smell you. I want… He deliberately trailed off because it was too much. He still felt hot.

So she went on. "Do you want me to confirm the attraction? Does that

help? Yes. Okay."

CHAPTER 2

I always knew Gunner and Stacy Wood had something going. Maybe everybody did. Now I wonder if any of us knew anything, or if we just projected what we wanted to be true onto those people we called teachers. I remember when Gunner was talking to us about the novel A Separate Peace. There’s a part in the novel where Gene refers to Brinker’s substantial buttocks or something. Anyway, the class became fixated on what we figured was evidence of Gene’s latent homosexuality. It was-n’t an academic postulate either; we were pretty much grossed out. Gunner’s response was twofold: number one, we were just easily derailed and homosexuality had nothing to do with what was going on; number two, even if Gene were homosexual, what difference did it make? Naturally, there were those that concluded that since Gunner was such a champion of fags, he must be one as well.

It was all pretty vague to our little minds since there was greater, more overwhelming evidence of his heterosexuality. Some kids were just so offended, I think, that they had to be angry with somebody. Since their little sensibilities were shaken by him, it must be his fault, and therefore, he would have to be the very thing that they were so terrified of. It all made perfect sense in a teenage kind of way. The fag theory didn’t really last very long, either. Like I said, there was too much to contradict it. I do remember that Gunner himself never really reacted to the indictment except to look exceptionally tired.

Maybe the worst thing about the rumor was that there were probably a lot of kids whose sexual identities weren’t even close to being intact. Most of us had little or no experience. We knew what we were expected to be, and what was cultural suicide, but that didn’t make it any easier. I don’t really know who was harmed or helped by Gunner’s willingness to discuss homosexuality, but I think the real harm occurred because of his failure to bring it off. I’m not faulting him. I try to bring up as much sex ed. as I can, but not much has changed, and I’m not as foolish, or as courageous, as Gunner was.

Miss Wood was a completely different story. There was no rumor about her being a lesbian. And even if there had been, no one would have believed it, or cared. It’s not that she was overdeveloped or wore skimpy clothes; it was more of a slow burn that made you want to stare. In my mind, she was a little like Jordan from The Great Gatsby.Not Daisy, who always seemed a little too fragile, a little too air headed. I don’t know, maybe Mia Farrow jaundiced my mind’s eye. Stacy Wood was more of an intellectual encounter. Your eyes weren’t necessarily entrapped by her body parts. And even though she had sleek, dark hair and pretty, brown eyes, they weren’t the secret. It was more of her mouth. She had that arrogance, which, if you think about it, almost always manifests itself in the mouth. A certain confidence that dismisses you. She was sexy, but not in the same way that Gloria Showat, my guidance counselor, was sexy. Gloria was an extremely nice, competent woman who happened to have an outrageous body. She knew it, we knew it, and the administration knew it. There were rumors that she’d had some silicone work but, thinking about it now, I doubt it. God just planned her that way. It wasn’t evil or even bad, just the way it was. I think everybody was sort of excited by her, even the girls and homos, but as far as I know she never came on to anyone. She was married, and anyway why would she? She was a woman. We were all children. I grew to appreciate that difference later.

I don’t remember anyone seriously suggesting that Gunner and Showat were involved, although she was in his classroom plenty of times on counseling business. I always thought those scheduled visits from the counselors were a waste of time. Now I know they are. We had this huge timewaster called JOB-O, an acronym for something but no one knew what. I always thought it sounded like some kind of excremental function. We have a similar school activity now. All the freshmen take from two to three days filling out a form that lists different careers and the kinds of personality traits usually associated with them. Anyway, the point is to find out what you are suited for based upon those likes and dislikes that define your personality. When I took the thing as a high school student I showed great promise as a dental hygienist, a civil engineer, a microbiologist, and a cop. I’m as confused about the results now as I was then, but I do remember that being a teacher ranked pretty low. I also recently took the current test when my own students did. Evidently I still should not be a teacher, but a nurse, a farmer, a truck driver, and, of course, a cop are the high scorers. The cop thing had me a little worried, but really, what I do is like being a cop. I remember Gunner pointing out that what he did, corralling young people in a classroom, was fundamentally wrong, that ideally kids would play, and only come into the classroom when they got bored. He got on this jag occasionally whenever he got sidetracked. More than once he went off about that movie with Sidney Poitier, the one where he was a teacher. Gunner never showed it to us but I rented it after I graduated. I can’t remember what it’s called. I keep thinking it’s Good-bye Mr. Chips but I know that’s wrong. Poitier plays a teacher in England with losers for students. Miraculously, he turns them all into wonderful human beings just before he is offered a better job somewhere as an engineer or something. Anyway, at the last minute Poitier decides to stay and carry on, teaching the next bunch of animals. Gunner hated it, said it was dishonest, that it was the biggest load of romantic crap ever.

When Showat would come into our room she would position herself in front of the class and walk back and forth as she delivered her message. No one really heard much of what she said, of course, because we were all too distracted, including Gunner. His desk was in the front of the room next to the side wall, so that he sat facing us and the rear of whomever was talking to the class, at kind of an oblique angle. Gloria’s rear was so delightful I don’t think Gunner could really help his reaction. And I’m sure Gloria couldn’t help it either.

That day with Gunner she had been telling us how important it was to keep our grades up right from the beginning of the year since we all wanted to graduate together, and how sad it was every year when some hapless soul couldn’t walk across the stage to accept his or her diploma. While she was addressing us she would turn quickly from side to side, leaning forward, facing first one kid, then another, sometimes swiveling to the chalkboard. It was a technique that had an interesting effect upon her breasts and bum. I remember Gunner’s reaction because I happened to glance at him just as he was slowly shaking his head as though in pain. Our eyes met and he just gave me a little grin.

When I first saw him I thought he was a new—though much cooler—senior. The hair, the jeans, the boots. He looked like an ad and I was insecure enough to feel intimidated. It’s not like I was alone. I was like every other senior guy: an adolescent who wanted desperately to be a man. And since my return to his class following The Great Laugh Out, my policy had been to wait until just before the tardy bell to enter. I hadn’t wanted any more confrontations so I made sure I wasn’t late, but I also hadn’t wanted to give Gunner the opportunity to offer some kind of an explanation. I mean, I knew I had an apology coming, but apologies, by convention, generally require acceptance, even if you are still mad. You’re still an injured party, but with your acceptance comes your tacit forgiveness. If you don’t accept then you have essentially issued a challenge and the wrongdoer gets a kind of moral release, with the added advantage of righteous indignation. So I was silently milking my injury for everything it was worth, which had been about a week, but Gunner, though polite, had pretty much ignored me. So the grin was significant.

After another half-hour, Showat finished and class was over. Instead of bolting out the door like I had the past four days, I waited, scrutinizing the banal graduation documents she had left. But the pretense was wasted since Gunner was reading something at his desk and didn’t notice me lurking behind. So I announced myself.

Uh, Mr. O’Reilly?

See, teachers are weird. You meet them, and without any of the normal, conventional social procedures, you begin to listen to them and to tell them things. You don’t shake their hands or inquire about their jobs or spouses. You just begin telling them things. And, despite this break with logic, you can’t call them by their names, but, ironically, the rules then kick back in, dictating that you use some distancing title.

Mr. O’Reilly?

Oh, hi. Gunner stopped reading but still looked a little distracted, even though he smiled like he meant it. Tom Judd, isn’t it? What’s up?

Well, I was just wondering something. What I actually said after the meaningless Well was something much closer to, I’s just kinda wonderin’ somethin’, and I can’t explain it except to admit that occasionally I have said these and other equally startling near-words. I have never heard anyone else in my family speak this way and it supports some adoption theories I have. My mother sometimes sounds half-witted but it’s different because she’s had a profound religious experience. I sometimes think I suffer from some kind of cerebral spasm that targets the logic and speech centers, because it’s the only way I can justify such an idiotic phrase. I still get enraged when I recall that gem.

I wanted to know what you thought about how I’m doing. I mean, I don’t want to not be able to walk across the stage at graduation like Ms. Showat was saying.

Gunner had this eye narrowing thing he did. It was intimidating and that first time I saw it I figured he didn’t know if I was serious and he hadn’t yet decided whether or not to be angry. These days I know what an annoyance it is to have a kid ask you how he’s doing. Usually you don’t really know. Not specifics at least. I mean if you’re a full time teacher you have between a hundred and fifty and two hundred students, very few of whom are standout personalities, so they tend to blend together.

Well, Tom, it’s only been two weeks. You missed the first week since you weren’t enrolled in my class yet. We don’t really have anything in the grade book yet besides that reaction essay where I had everyone write about high school, what’s good, what’s bad and what should be changed. That was mostly for my information. Everybody who did the assignment got at least a C. I think you did better than that didn’t you?

Yeah, a B. I’d puked something out about how my education so far had been satisfactory and that I didn’t really have any complaints except maybe that we had too much homework. The B had been generous.

I really don’t know what else I can tell you. I have noticed that you cut it pretty fine coming to class. He offered the comment with a smile that looked different from that phony plastic thing most teachers develop, so I pushed harder.

What do you mean?

Usually the tardy bell is ringing while you’re walking into the room. It’s not really a problem but it suggests a certain testiness.

I don’t understand.

Well, quite honestly, that testiness, coupled with the fact that you never volunteer anything in class, may or may not be interpreted as an attitude.

The word attitude by itself is neutral, but in this context no one ever mistakenly gives it a positive connotation. No one ever says, That boy has an attitude. I wish all my students were like him. It’s more like, "That boy has an attitude. I’d like to slap some sense into his thick

head."

What attitude? I don’t have an attitude!

Good. I didn’t think so. Relax. He was still smiling so I pushed on.

Well, jeez, just because I don’t say anything doesn’t mean I have an attitude.

Great.

I mean, I’m the one who got laughed at when I first came to your class. You can’t blame me for having an attitude.

No one laughed at you.

Everybody did! Charles Fenton hooted!

Don’t you think you’re taking yourself pretty seriously? Again his eyes narrowed, like he was testing this hypothesis. The smile left but I didn’t think he was getting angry, just maybe thinking about it.

No!

I do.

When I was growing up, only Paul was able to avoid my father’s contradictions and questions. With my father it wasn’t about skepticism. It was about being right. For some reason Paul was always right and the rest of us had to stand there and take correction. With Gunner, I almost bolted. I wanted to sweep everything from his desk, push him over backwards in his chair and run from the room, slamming the door so hard that its little wire reinforced prison window shattered from its stupid little casing.

No one laughed at you. They were laughing at me. I doubt anyone even noticed you were standing in the doorway. Did you ever ask anyone what we were laughing at?

I didn’t even answer. I was so enraged I could barely breathe.

He leaned back in his chair, raising its front legs off the floor. Where’s this going? That’s not what you’re really mad about is it?

Yes! As a matter of fact it is!

He smiled again a little. You know what? There’s a way we can work this out.

He remained leaning back, his fingers laced behind his head. I kept standing. I had a notebook and a paperback in my left hand. Catcher in the Rye. Gunner had only distributed the books the day before so we hadn’t started reading yet. The copies were old and nobody taught the book in the main English classes, even honors. Gunner had told us that he wanted to teach us books that we hadn’t read before and that this one was still banned in some schools. I thought that was cool, but mostly I was glad we were going to read it because Paul already had, two summers earlier. He’d checked it out of the library and read it just because, and it turned out that everyone in my family had read it, even my mother, so I pretended to have read it as well. I think Paul knew I was lying but we didn’t talk about it.

I stood in front of him, practically leaning on his desk because I was standing off balance, but I was damned if I was going to shift my weight and prove it. I was running my left thumb across the book’s pages, riffling them like cards. The pages were so soft from age and use that they made a whispering sound, not crisp like I wanted.

He kept smiling and said, Okay, we were laughing at you. What can I say?

I leaned harder, using my closed right knuckles as a brace against his wood desk. I remember wondering if I could still get a paper cut from the mellowed pages and started running the meat of my thumb down along the fluttering leaves.

What can I say, Tom?

I don’t know. A slice almost seemed to catch but passed and I started over.

Well, you seem to want some kind of satisfaction. What do you want?

I pushed harder against the desk and the knuckles popped a little but he kept watching me and smiling.

Why? Why were you laughing?

Why do you think? What do you think might’ve been amusing?

I don’t know! Nothing!

"Well, we were laughing. He narrowed his eyes but kept smiling. What is it about you?"

He asked as though it were his own problem, maybe a shared problem, that I could help with.

I don’t know. I must’ve looked funny or something. He raised his eyebrows a little as though I had revealed some new perspective and should go on. Was that it?

You don’t want to take this class do you?

What do you mean?

Just that. You’re beyond it, right?

No!

Sure you are. Ms. Showat talked to me. She told me why you’re here. Straight A’s until last year, then two B’s, a C and two F’s. Now you’ve got to make up some ground. That about it?

I guess so.

We watched each other. He scrutinized, using the eye narrowing instead of words. It felt like a conversation and I shifted my balance and took the book away from my thumb. He glanced at it.

"Have you read Catcher before?"

No. I almost added, but my brother has.

You’ll like it. He spoke confidently, like he knew.

I looked at the faded novel and nodded.

You know what? I lied. I looked back at him and he brought his chair forward,